Cullen rallies Brits for bronze bid

Great Britain hockey defender Crista Cullen will fight with "every last ounce of blood" to win a bronze medal because she is determined seven years of training must not go to waste.

The 26-year-old Leicester star will not allow the disappointment of losing to Argentina in the semi-final to affect the bid to salvage reward from the Olympic campaign.

Ever since the women's failure to qualify for the 2004 Athens Olympics and the announcement soon after of London's successful bid for the Games, the whole programme has been geared to winning gold on home soil.

Cullen admits that although a bronze medal is small consolation, the hosts are desperate to get on the podium and become only the second British women's team to come third, the first having been won at Barcelona in 1992. They face New Zealand tomorrow in the third-place play-off.

"We have not been shy of our aspirations," a tearful Cullen told Press Association Sport. "Our aim was to get a gold medal, that is what gets us up in a morning and makes us train so hard.

"We are one of the fittest teams here and we've put a lot of hard graft in here. For seven years our sole reason for training so hard was the aspiration to win a gold medal.

"The emotion you saw after the Argentina game are all those hard-fought days we have grafted through and I can't quite believe it.

"Bronze is everything we have to play for now.

"We need to go away, get it out of our systems - it is hard to admit your dream is over to some extent - but I am not going home empty handed.

"I will fight with every ounce of blood I have got to make sure I come home with a bronze medal."